Placebo 6 Night by Lacey Mitchell

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Nelson didn't feel hungry but at his mother's suggestion drank a small glass of milk before going to bed. He wondered if he'd gained any weight yet but resisted checking the scale; the doctor had recommended that he weigh himself only once a week because daily fluctuations might give him the wrong idea about whether his weight gain plan was working or not.

In his own room, he looked himself over in his mirror. He did look skinny but had something changed? Maybe, though he couldn't say what. He scratched his chest then his butt and went to bed.

He dreamed that Carmody had cooked up a scheme to get them into the girls' locker room at the tennis club. It involved dressing as girls, of course and he resisted the idea.

"It'll be fun," Carmody insisted.

"Fun for you, dude," said Nelson in the dream. "You're the one who wants to see them naked."

"Okay," said Carmody. "We don't have to both go. You dress in the tennis outfit, go inside and you can tell me all about what they look like in the shower."

"Somehow, that makes less sense than most of your ideas," said Nelson.

"All right, awright, dude," said the dream Carmody. "You wear the tennis skirt, come over to my house and we'll both take a shower."

"Naked?" asked Nelson.

"Who takes showers in their clothes? See, it isn't a stupid plan after all?"

"Um," said Nelson. He wanted to ask if they were going to shower together but just thinking of it made him squirm enough that he woke himself up.

He lay there in the dark, a bit of moonlight falling on the corner of his dresser. Somewhere outside, maybe in the hills, a dog or a coyote howled at the silvery moon. The house around him made gentle, homey creaks and pops as it cooled and settled on its foundation.

Nelson felt as if he might have an erection. This wasn't a completely unheard of thing, he sometimes had them in the mornings but coupled with the fragments of the dream he could remember, it disturbed him.

"Just a dream," he muttered. But he resisted using his hand to find out if he really had gotten stiff. He didn't like touching it when it was all hard, anyway. Things could happen that embarrassed him to think of them.

Before he realized it, he had fallen asleep again. This time he and Carmody stood in the hot blazing sun on the bleachers at school. Everyone else seemed to be wearing graduation gowns in the gold and purple of the school colors.

Except Carmody had on the camp uniform they had worn last summer, blue shorts and a white t-shirt with the camp logo in brown and green. "Too hot to wear those dresses, dude," said Carmody.

"Yeah," Nelson agreed. Dreamlike, the scene pulled back to show himself standing next to Carmody except instead of blue shorts he had on the red ones the girls wore at camp.

"You're still too skinny, dude," said Carmody.

The scene changed again, they were lining up for P.E. class. Everyone else in blue shorts and plain white tees but Nelson knew he still had on the red shorts. Even the girls at school wore blue shorts to P.E. so it wasn't like anyone would know he had on girls' shorts. Except Carmody.

"Still too skinny," said his friend, talking out of the corner of his mouth so the coach wouldn't hear him.

They ran and shouted and played in the hot sun until the coach sent them inside to shower and Nelson found himself sitting in the coach's office, dripping wet. He still had on the red shorts.

Coach Milliken worked at his desk, ignoring Nelson who dripped on the chair and the floor, a small pool of water forming around him. Tiny figures played water sports in the pool, a miniature Carmody splashing and laughing with some itty-bitty girls wearing bikinis.

Nelson looked up at the coach who asked, "Why did you take a shower in your clothes, dude?"

"I couldn't let Carmody see me naked," said Nelson, still dreaming.

"Too skinny," said the coach, nodding.

They rode the bus up to camp, Carmody at the window seat, Nelson on the aisle with his mom and dad in the seats facing them except that the bus wasn't really arranged that way.

His parents' mouths moved and they made gestures as if telling him something very important but he couldn't hear them.

Carmody made noises beside him. "Dude, there's naked chicks playing volleyball at camp."

Nelson looked down. He and Carmody were holding hands. "Are any of the girls too skinny?" asked Nelson.

"No, dude, they've all got jugs and big round asses."

"You be sure to take your pills at camp," his mother said to him.

"And don't let Carmody," said his dad.

"Don't let him what?" Nelson asked.

"You'll know."

Nelson woke again. The moonlight made a small shape like a trapdoor on the floor. A train somewhere rattled up a hill. The house felt silent, and sounded as if it might still be dreaming.

He knew for sure this time, lying on his stomach; he had a hard-on. He rolled out of bed and went down the hall to the bathroom where a tiny peanut light glowed in the dark. He still didn't want to touch it so he pulled down his shorts and sat on the toilet. He sat well back and leaned forward to aim it into the bowl.

He looked at his shorts, his boxer-style briefs around his ankles. In the darkness, they looked red. Liquid shot out from under the toilet seat and spattered on the back of his legs, dripping onto the red shorts.

"Crapulent bastard," he said, grunting. When he'd finished, he stood and pulled off his shorts to wipe things down, his legs, between his legs, the seat and the floor. He threw the shorts into the hamper and trudged back to his room.

Somehow, he'd removed his t-shirt, too but he didn't remember when. And now he had to get to his last period class without anyone finding him in the halls naked.

"Put this on," said Carmody.

Nelson put it on, a long red t-shirt, almost long enough to cover him down to his knees. No, shorter than that, it barely covered his butt.

"You're too skinny," said Carmody. "If you turn sideways, no one will notice that you're naked, dude."

"Thanks a lot," Nelson dreamed of saying, not sure just how he meant that.

Carmody laughed at him and he woke up, lying across the bed, naked. What had he done with his t-shirt?

He got up and found his underwear drawer in the dark, picking out a clean pair of boxers and a t-shirt to wear. The t-shirt, instead of being extra long seemed to be too tight, especially across the chest. "Am I awake?" he asked himself.

"No," said Carmody. "You're still dreaming."

Nelson shook himself awake, sitting up with his feet on the floor. He sat there a moment, being sure that he really was awake.

A sliver of moonlight had reached the bed. Traffic on the freeway, more than a mile away, murmured and whispered, already in a hurry with daylight two hours away. Nelson heard water running somewhere in the house.

He got up and went down the hall to see if he had left the toilet trying to refill, sometimes the handle got stuck. The sound stopped and he realized it had been coming from his parents' bathroom, through the wall from his own.

He made an effort to be extra quiet, making his way down the hall and through the dining room. The elderly cat that slept in the laundry room met him in the kitchen, stroking itself against his legs.

"Quiet, Softus," said Nelson, though the cat seldom made a sound louder than a delicate purr.

Nelson got two bowls from the cabinet, and filled one with Honey-Nut Cheerios, spilling just a few into the second bowl.

When he opened the refrigerator door, the light made him blink and squint but he found the milk for himself and the non-fat cottage cheese for the cat. Softus couldn't have milk anymore, it gave her terrible gas.

Nelson spooned a bit of cottage cheese onto the sprinkling of cereal and put it in the floor for the cat then poured milk over the more generous helping for himself. He sat at the kitchen table in the dark, eating and trying not to think about his dreams.

The cat nibbled at her unexpected treat and purred like corduroy being stroked with a finger tip.

The eastern mountains, seen through the tiny bay window in the kitchen, had just the first fingers of dawn making their edges visible as a darker darkness when he washed both bowls and the spoon and put them in the drainer.

He checked to be sure he had put everything away before he went back to bed.